[Mazhi]

1.National identity is extremely different from every other group identity that preceded it. We can talk about a certain level of biological ties with tribal identities (although even tribes were/are themselves quite mixed). Besides, things such as ethnicity weren't always as important as they were made later in the times of the birth of nationalism where it was elevated to a great level of importance in one way or another (most often via mythology). Look at the Ottoman Empire, where religion was what determined a person's social position (the millet system), and that was the most important identity. Then we have the Holy Roman Empire where lands were very important to people and a Carniolan Slovene and a Carniolan German would both consider their Carniolan land identity more important than their ethnicity.

But what nation-building does is select a certain territory and invent a certain identity, assigns it a certain destiny, and this can take all sorts or forms, depending on the socio-historical facts that led to this specific manifestation of identity (often this has to do with ethnic myths), which brings me to:

2.In France, for example, there was still great ethnolinguistic diversity in the beginning of the 19th century, and there still didn't exist a widespread national identity, eapecially among peasants. The centralised state-bueraucratic apparatus started to build a French national identity, and one of the ways they did that was to suppres their specific traditions and force a common French identity onto them, and that included the French language. Nowadays the descendants of these people are all proud Frenchmen, even though their ancestors from 200 years ago would give them funny looks if someone told them they were supposed to feel a strong connection with all inhabitants of France.

3.As far as "race" is concerned, all you have to do is look at the USA where black and white Americans share a common national identity. As far as genetic differences that aren't so visible, investigate the genetics of the average European nation and see how genetically mixed it actually is.

4.As for more about linguistics, you could take a look at Switzerland. The Swiss people are of different ethnolinguistic identities, and yet share one strong common national identity.

5.Another example with more similar languages are the nations in the area of the South Slavic dialect continuum. For example, let's take Croats and Serbs: A number of Serbs speak the Shtokavian dialect and so do a number of Croats. Some Croats speak the dialect of Kajkavian and some speak Chakavian. And yet, the Croats have a common identity and the Serbs have their own common identity. Which means that a Croat Shtokavian speaker shares an identity with someone who speaks more differently from him than his Serb neighbour. But it's true that religious differences historically played a part there so let's look at an example of where rhey didn't:

6.Slovenes and Croats are both historically Catholic. As far as language is concerned, here's the deal. A person living in certain border regions, whether they're Slovenes or Croats, speak very similar dialects, sometimes practically indistinguishable. I personally live in the other side of Slovenia where the dialect is noticeably different (Slovenia is actually extremely dialectally diverse, and not just in per capita terms). And yet, the Slovenes in the border regions feel a sense of connection with me, not with the guy who speaks the same as them but happens to have a Croatian national identity. Why? Because national identity is arbitrary and socio-politically constructed.

7.Another interesting example showing the arbitrariness of national identity are the Macedonians. Like the Bulgarians they are Orthodox. Their languages are quite similar. Their lifestyles, culture and mentality also. By all means, there's no reason why these people should not be one nation, right? Wrong. Due to historical events, mostly the fact that the Bulgarian government sided with Germany in WW2 which is something the Yugoslav Macedonians disliked as they were predominantly anti-Axis and set up their resistance movement with widespread support when Yugoslavia was attacked, they developed their own distinct national identity. Go to a Macedonian now and tell him there is no such thing as a Macedonian national identity and you might get punched in the face.

8.Look at the situation in Taiwan. There, you have an example of two competing national narratives about Taiwan. A bit over half of the population claim that Taiwanese identity is part of a greater Chinese national identity. But a number of Taiwanese claim that Taiwanese identity is a specific national identity. Both are right because national identity is what you decide it to be.

9.Look at Northern Ireland. Yes, there are the Protestants and Catholics but like in the case of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, this is not really a religious dispute. Religion in these cases serves more like a "national flag", symbol of national identity. To get to the point, you have two different national identities, both arbitrary, ideological, subjective, and both are completely valid.

10.I just listed the examples here that I know the most about. But look at any national identity and you'll see something similar going on - an arbitrary, ideological, subjective, psychological, systematically and deliberately created identity.

P.S.: Okay, I'm not really an expert on this. I'm just interested in reading about it. Perhaps I'm not presenting things exactly the right way. Maybe I'm getting half of it wrong. This is an incredibly complex issue and one has to read tons of books to get things straight, something I haven't really done yet, and perhaps never will.

Here are some quotes by Stipe I've just looked up (unfortunately, he's not posting here anymore, for some reason), who deals with this professionally:

...Yes, they're different ethnicities and the understanding of ethnicity in this poll is limited. There are no objective criteria for determining ethnicity. Rather, ethnicity is about the particular way people relate to each other, either seeing themselves as belonging to a common group or to different groups. Shared cultural traits are used as markers (and cultural differences are much more significant than how is represented in the first post), but these are fluid and changeable over time. Furthermore, much of what determines group belonging is conditioned by the social history of the individual groups vis-a-vis each other and those that ruled over them.

Language is only one potential external marker used to delineate belonging to the ethnic group, but it's not the only one and often the idea of common language for all the people who belong to the ethnic group had to be deliberately constructed (see Germans, Italians, Han Chinese). Religion, however, is marginalized here when it is historically at least as important. For centuries, religious adherence was the most important form of group belonging; it impacted on the group's status within the larger society (for instance, the status of Christians in an Islamic theocratic state), internal group solidarity, social life and economic relations, affected more benign areas of culture (diet, festivals, naming conventions) and the boundaries between groups were policed by conventions over marriage.

The interplay between religion and social difference is not a small thing and has everywhere perpetuated itself into the modern world, whether it be in Germany with the kulturkampf, northern Ireland, or the history of Jews everywhere. Now consider how that interplay would perpetuate itself in an area of Europe that was basically a Crusading zone for about 300 years.

And yet, despite all that members of these different groups in the former Yugoslavia worked for 150 years to bring these groups together as one national community. The common language that people with superficial knowledge of these things always emphasize was itself a product of that 150 years' process. And in many ways, these people had less to work with in terms of historical memory. There was never a Yugoslav version of the Holy Roman Empire that could be represented as a precursor to a future modern unity. In the usable past, there had simply been the medieval kingdoms of Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia. A myth of common ancestry, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of ethnic identity, uniting these groups did not exist (in contrast, Croats an Serbs do have such myths).

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=124226

Well, the subject peoples being talked about are ethno-national communities, so nationality can't be completely removed from the discussion. Part of the subject of my dissertation is how people in this region were ethnicized as a consequence of the competition between different national projects.

But in any case, I would back up and contend that there is no resemblance between Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs and the Greek polises. The Greek polises were politically-divided, but shared a conception of themselves as culturally-united on the basis of language and religion. The Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs were politically-divided, culturally-divided, and, when they came under the rule of one empire or another, socially-divided for their entire histories.

On Northern and Southern Germany, and the North and South in the USA:

It is a very significant cultural difference because of what underpins it. One reason is the Catholic cultural inheritance and the other is the historically different social structure. Writing off the agrarian character of the region in relation to the north shows the limits of your understanding of the theoretical subject of this debate. Differences in social structure and the problems of uneven development are frequently at the heart of ethnogenesis as well as nation-formation. Such differences very nearly divided the United States into two national communities in the Civil War.

As for your counter-example, it's not the same thing. You and your Catholic rural farmer neighbors are laterally united by several things: the political institutions of the Canadian nation-state, the social communication that takes place between the town and its agricultural hinterland, and your participation in common market structures. Though you live different occupational lifestyles, you participate together within the confines of larger structures.

The example of the United States is more illuminating. You need to think more deeply about what the consequences were of the Southern slave society. You cannot talk about it as a simple difference in economic modes of production. You also need to consider it as a bedrock of an entire, strictly hierarchical social order legitimized by an ideology of white supremacy. This reaches a height with the invention of the cotton gin and the subsequent development of the Southern cotton monoculture over the course of the 60 years prior to the Civil War. At the same time, the North is making the transition from a society based on subsistence agriculture to one based on industry and rapid urbanization. As a consequence of the industrial revolution, Northern society (like the societies of northern Europe at about the same time) is being radically transformed. Old hierarchies and social relationships in the North are being undermined and becoming vastly more fluid because of the emergence of capitalism, whereas in the South old hierarchies founded on the agrarian slave economy are being reinforced and intensified by market forces. You can see in this way how the two societies were then entering a fairly prolonged period of radical divergence, which was only overcome through war and the forced abolition of slavery which paved the way for the same basic kinds of developments which were already affecting the North to take hold in the South. In that way, their social structures moved back towards convergence.

The reality is that Croat, Bosniak, and Serb ethno-national identities function in exactly the same way other in the region do. In the Orthodox countries, the national churches have always been the primary carrier of national identity. Hence you had people "repatriated" to Greece from Turkey during the population exchanges who barely spoke a word of Greek but happened to be Orthodox. In the early history of Croatian nationalism, religious difference was in fact not regarded as the central element of national ideology, because the main national adversaries (the Hungarians and Italians) were also largely Catholic. It wasn't until after the First World War, as the political conflicts with Serbia began, that Croatdom came to mean being Catholic. It's not any different than how Catholicism became nationalized in Poland because of that nation's conflicts with Orthodox Russia.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=103811

Actually, that part isn't what I'm going after in particular. I'm rather warning against the whole idea that Serbs/Croats/Franks/whatever migrated and took possession of a territory as a coherent people and that the contemporary population are their descendants. The Geary book is good as it shows how such groups were not homogeneous populations to begin with and the meaning of the "ethnic" name was continually in flux, given new content, and used in different ages with completely different definitions.

How would you react if I said that a) that proto-Serbs, so to speak, were not what we would think of as an ethnicity and that b) those who identify as serbs today probably have no biological descent from those same proto-Serbs whatsoever?

One of those posts where you put up a map of Lusatia and said "this is where we came from." I distinctly remember the "we". It's a primordialist phrasing that assumes continuity between whoever those people were in the 7th century and the modern ethno-national community.

Your culture has nothing to do with those Serbs whatsoever. They left literally nothing but their name and were probably not even a cultural group in the first place. Serbian culture shares no more with Sorbian culture than all Slavs share with each other. You carry their name because they managed to found a state to which they gave their name, and then founded a church which conveyed that name and the memory of that state, but these things were not carried with them from Lusatia.

No no no, it is precisely the culture of those slavs which has been inherited. But those people weren't Serbs yet. Slavic tribes had already settled the Balkans a century before the Serbs appearance in the historical record. Those Slavs didn't spontaneously pick up the name. They did so for a very good reason - they became subjects of the Serbian state and, later, were adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church which preserved the memory of said state.

But is it actually the memory of those people? I don't think so. If the memory was preserved, the "Unknown Archont" would have a name and not just a 19th century academy-invented stand in, albeit one that sounds supercool in English.


What Serbian collective memory recalls is a whole different category of people calling themselves Serbs. What the name meant to them is something different from what the name meant to whoever the Serbs were that moved into the Balkans in the 7th century. One was some kind of tribal-barbarian confederacy which, like everyone else in Europe, invented a myth of common ethnic descent along the model of Roman historiography and the concept of the organic gens. The other is a state community comprised of people who were there before previous mentioned Serbs ever arrived.

No, this is not a continuation by any stretch of the imagination. This is a transformation. A break with two pasts.

Once again, no they didn't. The Serbs that came down were assimilated without the slightest trace left, passed down *nothing* material. Once again, Slavs were already there. It is the culture of those Slavs that you have. I've stated it before, but there is absolutely *no* break in the archaeological record from the time before the arrival of the Serbs to the time afterwards. Pottery, building styles, jewelry, whatever, all stay the same. What this says is that these Serbs were a small group, probably more of a roving military band than a people, and simply imposed their political authority over a preexisting culture. That political authority's name was then transferred to that preexisting culture via that state and its use propagated and expanded via the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church. Once again, this is not continuity, unless you choose to consider a complete re-defining to be continuity (but then why have language at all?)

You're going about this wrong. The general thought among historians is that Serbs (and Croats) established themselves as political-warrior elites in the territories they ruled. Being Slavic themselves, cultural assimilation to the majority would have happened easily. They probably maintained their sense of separateness not as any kind of discernible ethnic group but more as a closed social class (i.e., they became the nobility). Read Geary's book and you'll see not only how this sort of thing is possible, but also just how common it was across Europe.

Here are probably some of the most important things about all this:

That doesn't make any sense. Of course religion and ethnicity were distinguishable. One could be conscious of the fact that your village speaks a dialect completely incomprehensible to a village 50 miles down the road. They could still, however, be Christian, which was more important anyway.

Confessionalism refers to the time in European history when religious community was the overriding principle of political legitimation. A Catholic king derived his legitimacy before his Catholic subjects by virtue of the fact that he was Catholic. Likewise, if his subjects were Protestants, his legitimacy would be rather less in their eyes.

Ethnic homogeneity probably first started to be considered as important with the German nationalist Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He lived during the Napoleonic occupation of Germany and articulated a German nationalism in opposition to the French. However, since there was no united German state, he used ethno-linguistic and to some degree religious criteria to determine the extent of the imagined nation. Ethnic homogeneity as an overriding principle of political legitimacy grew from there but became especially around the 1880s and 1890s, when racialist thinking was also in the ascendant, and reached its nadir with the end of the First World War and the "nationalities principle". The idea wasn't exactly that other groups caught on the wrong side of the border should be exterminated or moved, but that state borders be coterminous with ethnic borders. This, obviously, was a problem considering that clear ethnic borders are far less common than areas of mixedness and cultural hybridity (Trieste and the Julian March being the examples par excellence)

Ethnicity is a very fluid concept but I would consider it a group united by cultural markers (in the pre-industrial period, also social structure) which shares a particular ethnic consciousnesses underpinned by a myth of common ancestry. Distinguishing between regional culture and a broader national cultural community (what you call "racial" culture, which is problematic terminology since it connects biology and culture) is actually to accept the assumptions of ethno-nationalists about the territory and extent of the ethnic nation. Regional cultures and identities are quite capable of being ethnicized as a result of socio-political processes, and indeed have.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that ethnicity doesn't mean anything. Rather, I think you've already put your finger on it: as one of the ways of identifying with (or rather identifying as a part of) a particular kind of social group. Ethnicity may be bounded by cultural markers, but seems to owe its salience as a type of identity to differences of social structure, either present or historical, within a particular political context. It's thus very much akin to other constructs like race in America or pre/early-modern European confessionalism, but is constituted through a particular set of cultural and historical narratives as opposed to religious or phenotypical ones.

I thin I'm pretty much in complete agreement with you. The idea that ethnic homogeneity is particularly desirable is not out of some special essential cohesiveness of ethnic groups, but because - since the 19th century - ethnicity has been constructed as a (in many places the) key principle of political legitimization and social organization. This has obscured the fact that even a supposedly ethnically homogeneous society continues to be riven by conflict between social groups though they may define themselves using a different terminology.

Some more great stuff by Stipe here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=108468

Such as this:

The turn of this conversation is interesting in that it illuminates, with its discussion of cultural differences just how much Herder and the 19th century central European conception of nationality has a grip on the modern imagination. I found it particularly interesting that in one post, political differences were specifically discarded. However, nation is fundamentally a political category, referring as it does to a group of people who recognize each other as belonging to a sovereign community with a common historical past and destiny as a political unit. Hence, the idea of the nation has always gone hand in hand with the the state, and the nation has always been formed *by* the state, either with it or in opposition to it. Language and culture do not determine nation but selective traits from those viewed as distinguishing are used to mark the members of the national community. That they recognize each other as belonging to such a community is on account of historical and social developments. Assertions that a Canadian nation (or a Spanish nation) does not exist are ideological claims made on large groups of people who would very probably strongly disagree with such a claim at the present time. Certainly,it's been my experience that there are very very few Anglo-Canadians who would even find the idea of a common community with Americans at all attractive.

And this:

A national identity is a particular kind of identity and when a community accepts such an identity, then it is a nation. Language and culture alone never made nations. In the past, they didn't even necessarily signify ethnicity. What was more important in determining ethnicity in the past were differences of social structure (agrarian vs. pastoral for example). It wasn't until industrialization brought a big flattening of these social structures that things like language, cuisine, folk dress etc were latched onto in order to maintain the social cohesion of the group.

As for Bretons and Occitans, it is in fact quite debatable how many of the Bretons and Occitans actually consider themselves as belonging to a nation separate from the French nation. I'm sure some do but I would wager that there are not terribly many. Two hundred years of living in an assimilationist French nation-state has done its job. The idea of Breton and Occitan nations remains largely a hypothetical or project idea. This is very different from the Czechs and the Slovaks (both of whom were never a part of the German Empire btw). The Czechs were a part of the distinctly non-national "Austrian" half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Slovaks were a part of the Kingdom of Hungary, which tried very hard to make the Slovaks into something like the Bretons and Occitans, but they did not have the strength to do it and instead ended up encouraging the idea of the Slovak nation, in opposition to the Hungarian nation-state.

And here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1160&start=20

Nationality has nothing to do with the biological concept of race even in ethnic nation states. They all possess a diversity of physical types because populations have been flowing and mixing long before the development of modern national identity.

And this: viewtopic.php?f=44&t=84130&start=20

Well, we'll be at an impasse because I find the biological element of ethnicity to be overplayed. It presumes an innateness which isn't there. I can name plenty of different ethnic groups which share common origins but which developed through separate ethnogeneses for socio-cultural, historical, and even political reasons. Even those socio-cultural reasons are insufficient in explaining ethnogeneses as the traits that become markers of ethnic identity derived from that I chosen more or less arbitrarily. It is my deeply held opinion that any attempt to understand ethnicity without consideration of the (subjective) ethnic identity of the individual is failed as it can just as easily be imagining and imposing (or negating) an identity which the individual (and his ethnic community at large) does not recognize.

To sum it up, this: viewtopic.php?t=81737

Most of the discussion on nationalism that goes on in this forum (either from the left or the right) is pretty poor on average. It's pretty frustrating for me, essentially as I'm starting a Ph.D on the subject.

Firstly, the the nation is best thought of as a large group of people which is self-conscious of its internal unity, recognizes limits (i.e., people and places which are outside the bounds of the nation), and (most importantly) conceives itself as being politically sovereign.

There are many different kinds of nationalisms, and subsequently different kinds of nations. Generally, the classical divide is between "Civic" (Western) and "Ethnic" (Eastern). In theory, the civic nation (examples, United States, France) is conceived as the community of citizens. Ethnic nationalism typically occurred in places without a preexisting national state. Generally speaking, peoples who conceived of themselves as a single nation but were politically divided (pre-unification Italy and Germany) or places that were under the domination of other empires (the nationalities of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires). That division isn't necessarily a clean one, nor always a good one. #1 objection is that nations we think of as "civic" can certainly exhibit "ethnic" characteristics and vice versa. #2 is that the division is inherently orientalizing, but that's a different beast altogether.

Nationalism is the ideology that "the nation" (that is, the people) is politically sovereign and thus deserves the right to govern itself. Carried out to its logical conclusion, it basically means that the nation deserves its own state (the nation-state) and that the nation-state should conform to the physical boundaries of the nation as closely as possible. Initially, this was a very romantic and liberal idea which saw (primarily) Europe as a group of independent and politically liberal states coexisting alongside each other. This made sense at the time (early 19th century) because it was part of a liberal reaction to rule by absolute monarchy. This began to shift later into various "integral nationalist" ideologies once the contradiction in romantic nationalism became apparent. Different nations can have a basis to lay claim to the same area (usually places with mixed populations) and that obviously leads to conflict.

The "nationalist state" is not really a term that is used and I'm not sure what you would call it. The nation-state is something like Germany, Hungary, or Poland. Generally, it's a state in which the majority of that nation lives and which sees itself as the political representative of that national community on the international scale. For example, Hungary would see itself as the international political advocate for ethnic Hungarian minorities living in Slovakia, Serbia, Romania etc. Of course, nation-states can have wildly different forms of governments. Liberal democratic Czechoslovakia was a nation-state, and Nazi Germany was a nation-state. They both derived their political legitimacy from the nation (Czech and Slovak or German respectively), but politically they were as different as night and day.

Today, nationalism is often equated to racism and the far right by some on the political left. Usually though, these are people with a quite superficial understanding of it. It's not that they're completely wrong because certain interpretations of nationalism (usually originating from people on the far-right) have had significantly racist connotations. My problem though is when people argue that nationalism is essentially racist and/or authoritarian, or that the nation was something imposed by elites to divide the laboring classes. It firstly displays ignorance of how and why the concept of the nation developed in the first place, ignores the long relationship between political liberalism and nationalism through the 19th century as well as the histories of the various national movements which were socialist or generally left-wing in their social content, and in general totally fails to acknowledge the staggering diversity of national ideologies that could (and would) develop within only a single nation (including sometimes very different ways of "imagining" the nation). There are definitely nationalist ideologies and movements which I perceive as fundamentally reactionary, but there are also many others that I definitely feel one would be justified in calling progressive (like any number of anti-colonial movements). Simply put, context and content are crucially important.

There are plenty of cases where some states and nations have tried to deny the nationhood of others living within their borders. Tends to be a particular characteristic of nations that claim to have a civic identity. They might recognize that ethnic difference, but will maintain that there is only one "political nation" in the state and that all citizens regardless of ethnicity are a part of it. It sounds inclusive, but in practice it has also usually been strongly assimilatory in nature. Generally, this is the state's reaction to what it sees (admittedly, with reason) to secessionist and/or irredentist tendencies among its minorities. This won't change the fact if a group has already acquired a national consciousness though and really, it's a means of the dominant community in the state to erode that consciousness. As long as that nation is aware of itself as a nation, it won't matter if anyone tells them otherwise.

Definitely and in most cases language is indeed a crucial marker identifying that nation. It's certainly not the only one though as different nations can share a language, but that particular language itself can be a marker. Example, Americans do not have a unique language of their own, but English is nonetheless seen by many (if not most) as a marker of American identity. Historically, linguistic assimilation has been one of the main weapons in weakening other groups' national consciousness (i.e., Russification in Poland and Ukraine, Germanization and Magyarization in the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

The crucial role of language is especially strong in Central Europe, where ethnic notions of identity originated. This is basically the result of Herder's argument that language was a carrier of the spirit of the nation. He predicated this on the idea that language determines how people think. Thus, according to him, members of the ethno-linguistic nation share something as fundamental as how they conceptualize the world. It then follows that that the defence of the native vernacular language and cultural traditions is actually also the defence of the nation's individuality and indeed of its very existence.

Of course though, there are nationalisms which aren't so much dependent on a common language. The obvious example is Indian nationalism, which encompasses numerous different languages. This is also true to some extent in Han Chinese national identity. Although Han do share a common literary language, although Chinese "dialects" are as divergent as Romance languages. Nonetheless, these communities perceive themselves (for the most part anyway) as a national whole united by common culture.

...

Well, reason does exist but it doesn't apply universally. Nazism, obviously, was absolutely a racist and authoritarian ideology and nationalism was an element within it. However, presenting all nationalist ideologies and national movements as the same thing as that, because they both have the nation as a concept, even if that nation might be defined in radically different terms, is kind of like conflating the welfare state with Stalinism.

You are right that drawing that link is nonetheless an effective way of attacking a national movement. It doesn't surprise me that it would be used against Scottish nationalists despite the fact that the parties supporting Scottish independence are virtually all center-left and that they never campaign on any kind of ethnic chauvinism.

Now that I think about it, this is probably the reason he eventually left:

Most of the discussion on nationalism that goes on in this forum (either from the left or the right) is pretty poor on average. It's pretty frustrating for me, essentially as I'm starting a Ph.D on the subject.

[Rei Murasame]

German homosexual recycled Blavatskyism.

I don't know, I feel we could do with a lot more Blavatsky in the world.

I didn't realise you were aware of her, why do you hate her?

[Potemkin]

Theosophy was the Scientology of its time.

[Far-Right Sage]

No, although given some of Blavatsky's personal failures and perpetual financial trouble, its structure during that period could be interpreted in such a way.

Despite all that, there is much to admire from Blavatsky. If anything, what National Socialist Germany required was a trend more in this direction and away from the conservative Protestant elite. This couldn't have been accomplished with anything less than the outright replacement of the traditional Junker class and aristocratic staff officers with an entirely new aristocratic framework as Himmler planned. Julfest within the Reich should offer a fair taste of what was to come. Ah, the possibilities!

What is truly needed is a discussion topic relevant to not only Theosophy, but Perennialism. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on such topics, Potemkin. I wonder if you are a fan of Eliade's work (regardless of ideology apart from religious doctrine such as his allegiance to the Iron Guard)?

[Smilin' Dave]

If anything, what National Socialist Germany required was a trend more in this direction and away from the conservative Protestant elite. This couldn't have been accomplished with anything less than the outright replacement of the traditional Junker class and aristocratic staff officers with an entirely new aristocratic framework as Himmler planned.

You have a signature about how "Prussian values never die" yet propose a plan that would destroy the traditional Junker class and replace it with something that was faux-pre-Prussian, oppose a Protestant elite? You are not making much sense again.

[Potemkin]

What is truly needed is a discussion topic relevant to not only Theosophy, but Perennialism. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on such topics, Potemkin. I wonder if you are a fan of Eliade's work (regardless of ideology apart from religious doctrine such as his allegiance to the Iron Guard)?

I've always admired Eliade's work on 'primitive' religions (which are sometimes collectively and misleadingly known as 'shamanism'). He took these 'primitive' religions seriously at a time when most scholars regarded shamans as either frauds or lunatics, and he laid the groundwork for the modern philosophical and anthropological interpretation of these religions. He was also one of the first to bring to our attention the fact that most of the 'civilised' religions such as Judaism, Christianity or even Buddhism or Daoism actually have shamanistic origins which have strongly influenced their nature even to this day.

I find Eliade's political views to be... unfortunate. But the same can be said of C.G. Jung as well. Basically, they were men of their time and their place.

[pugsville]

the Nazis WERE bad. Really Bad. They planned to massively depopulate eastern europe, starvation was the plan. Though some Nazi's and Germans were keen to use/ally with Ukrainians the facts are those running the show were simply not interested in co-operation, but were keen to depopulate and "remove" most of the population. Food was forbidden to be brought into Kiev. Poland was not allowed to exist as a Political entity. The Nazi's Ideas about race were extreme, the Jews were just the start.

Sure others did bad stuff, Colonialism had it's own sad/bad history, and Stalin killed his millions and the Allies had their share of bad stuff, but the Nazis were clearly worse. Extermination of vast numbers and groups of people just because there are the wrong race is pretty hard to beat. IF the Nazis had more time and actually got control of all the east they would have really been much much much worse than Stalin. The Fact that the Soviet people backed Stalin over Hitler does actually say something, many welcomed and would have worked with the Germans (many did anyway) but the German plans were the starvation of elimination of the vast bulk of the population.

I really can't understand the huge internet nostalgia and Nazi apologists.

[Far-Right Sage]

What you are referring to is colonialism with more efficient technology, taking place in Europe rather than a dark continent and therefore of course it's "worse". The entire scale argument is nonsense. Had the Mongol Empire had 20th century German technology behind their Nine Banners, the human population today would likely be halved.

Men, women, and children were chained and enslaved in the Atlantic slave trade, and pagan Amerindians were tortured and executed in mass numbers on the basis of race and religion routinely. The fact that you still attempt to present German actions or plans as extraordinary in history in terms of violence is ridiculous and blatantly colored by what has likely been drummed into your head as a result of the era in which we reside; the war is still fresh. The same Europeans who resisted Mongol absorption would likely refer to Hitler as a civilized gentleman defender of knightly European traditions and Temudjin as a thuggish evil brute. It's entirely perspective, and this is precisely why outside of the West, National Socialist Germany doesn't carry any more stigma whatsoever than British, French, or Spanish colonialism.

I have always remained steadfast in the belief that morality has no relation to politics, but if one were to apply any such standard or measuring stick, British actions in the Opium Wars appear worse to me than anything Germany did.

You have a signature about how "Prussian values never die" yet propose a plan that would destroy the traditional Junker class and replace it with something that was faux-pre-Prussian, oppose a Protestant elite? You are not making much sense again.

Unfortunately it's largely dependent on circumstances. Were Strasserism allowed to take root, I believe the Junker class would have served an integral purpose in the German state. As history developed, they could no longer be trusted following July 20th of '44.

I've always admired Eliade's work on 'primitive' religions (which are sometimes collectively and misleadingly known as 'shamanism'). He took these 'primitive' religions seriously at a time when most scholars regarded shamans as either frauds or lunatics, and he laid the groundwork for the modern philosophical and anthropological interpretation of these religions. He was also one of the first to bring to our attention the fact that most of the 'civilised' religions such as Judaism, Christianity or even Buddhism or Daoism actually have shamanistic origins which have strongly influenced their nature even to this day.

I find Eliade's political views to be... unfortunate. But the same can be said of C.G. Jung as well. Basically, they were men of their time and their place.

I agree with your statements, but in reference to politics, it does not seem such a range of views on spirituality would be entirely reconciled with a Marxist ethos.

[Potemkin]

I agree with your statements, but in reference to politics, it does not seem such a range of views on spirituality would be entirely reconciled with a Marxist ethos.

How so? It seems to me that Eliade's approach to spirituality was entirely consistent with a Marxist ethos - just as Marx attempted to discover the historical and social origins of political economy, so Eliade attempted to discover the historical and social origins of human spirituality. He did not take the existing ideological superstructure (in the form of institutional religion) for granted, but sought to uncover the historical and social base of that superstructure. Besides, shamanism says little to nothing about the concept of an external, personal God - shamanism is not so much a religion as a technology of spirituality, one which emphasises the origin of spirituality as an experience within the individual. This is entirely commensurate with Marx's insistence that the concept of 'God' is merely the self-alienation of human potentials and capacities which cannot (yet) be achieved in material reality. Eliade also emphasised the significance of the fact that the shaman is always part of a community, and that his or her spiritual experiences only have meaning or purpose within the context of that community (it follows from this that the modern New Age 'urban shaman' is actually a phony shaman). I simply fail to see how any of this is incompatible with Marxism.

[Smilin' Dave]

Unfortunately it's largely dependent on circumstances. Were Strasserism allowed to take root, I believe the Junker class would have served an integral purpose in the German state. As history developed, they could no longer be trusted following July 20th of '44.

Strasserism's calls for wealth redistribution and the breakup of large estates are decidedly anti-Junker so I'm unclear how a victory of Strasserism would have avoided the purge you recommended earlier. Old prussian values never die unless it in July 1944 perhaps

[Far-Right Sage]

How so? It seems to me that Eliade's approach to spirituality was entirely consistent with a Marxist ethos - just as Marx attempted to discover the historical and social origins of political economy, so Eliade attempted to discover the historical and social origins of human spirituality. He did not take the existing ideological superstructure (in the form of institutional religion) for granted, but sought to uncover the historical and social base of that superstructure. Besides, shamanism says little to nothing about the concept of an external, personal God - shamanism is not so much a religion as a technology of spirituality, one which emphasises the origin of spirituality as an experience within the individual. This is entirely commensurate with Marx's insistence that the concept of 'God' is merely the self-alienation of human potentials and capacities which cannot (yet) be achieved in material reality. Eliade also emphasised the significance of the fact that the shaman is always part of a community, and that his or her spiritual experiences only have meaning or purpose within the context of that community (it follows from this that the modern New Age 'urban shaman' is actually a phony shaman). I simply fail to see how any of this is incompatible with Marxism.

Everything you state here about Eliade's work is technically correct, but perhaps I have read into it what I believe to be the implicit truth that Eliade himself while devising a technical framework for the comprehensive understanding of both Abrahamic and Dharmic spiritual traditions, has himself lent credence to these traditions rather than seeking to criticize from the outside or attempt at placing a strictly materialist perspective on these belief systems. It appears incompatible to Marxist thought because Eliade through his work, while attempting to forge an understanding of these faiths from a technical (and one could argue scientific/materialist) basis, he has never once hoisted an atheistic narrative in opposition to their benevolent function in society.

Marx referred to religion as the opium of the masses. It seems then that Eliade would refer to religion, and indeed even the field of comparative religious studies, as the grappling hook of men and society to propel ourselves upwards (if not necessarily forwards in an abstract sense). Eliade seems through his research and conclusions here to lend such sentiments to Radical Traditionalist thought, which can only be described as the rebellious spirit which rises from time to time against materialist ideologies - not just Marxism, but liberalism as well, and to some extent, even Fascism, which many Romanian spiritualists who Eliade sympathized with and the Evolian strain of thought in Italy considered too populistic, popular, and commonly vulgar.

Strasserism's calls for wealth redistribution and the breakup of large estates are decidedly anti-Junker so I'm unclear how a victory of Strasserism would have avoided the purge you recommended earlier. Old prussian values never die unless it in July 1944 perhaps

Do you believe the implementation of Strasserist principles would have led to a general "purge" of the Prussian elite or simply land redistribution as it was proposed in the Castile and León region of Spain by the Falange for the benefit of Castilian farmers and agricultural workers without the call for any purge of the Spanish elite, beyond obvious profiteers? Prussian militarism and the Völkisch spirit were enshrined within Strasserism and my point and the reference to the July plot of '44 was that perhaps if the Strasserite wing were to rise before the SA purges and total consolidation of central power, a collision course would not have been set with traditional elements in the military. To be sure, fatcat industrialists would be even less happy with the Strasser brothers than they were with Hitler, but these people are not representative of Prussian values in any meaningful sense of the term. One cadre of SS men in one day did more in the way of restoring honor to old Preußen than Franz von Papen did throughout his career.

[Potemkin]

Everything you state here about Eliade's work is technically correct, but perhaps I have read into it what I believe to be the implicit truth that Eliade himself while devising a technical framework for the comprehensive understanding of both Abrahamic and Dharmic spiritual traditions, has himself lent credence to these traditions rather than seeking to criticize from the outside or attempt at placing a strictly materialist perspective on these belief systems.

Eliade was, of course, not a materialist. He was, however, a careful and thoughtful scholar who took little or nothing for granted. And by taking the 'primitive' shamanic religions seriously, he was indeed implicitly criticising the established religious traditions of Europe. True 'faith', in the context of institutional religion, means not taking other religions seriously. As soon as you adopt a neutral, scholarly attitude to spirituality or religion, you are immediately undermining 'faith'. Why else do you think the Roman Catholic Church was so hostile to the critical scholarship of the 19th century? They were absolutely right to be hostile - these scholars were undermining religious faith, first among the intellectual elite and ultimately among the masses.

It appears incompatible to Marxist thought because Eliade through his work, while attempting to forge an understanding of these faiths from a technical (and one could argue scientific/materialist) basis, he has never once hoisted an atheistic narrative in opposition to their benevolent function in society.

Neither did Marx. The Bolshevik 'League of the Militant Godless' of the 1920s had little to do with Marxism and a lot more to do with Russian traditions of state religion and the historical opposition to that state religion.

Marx referred to religion as the opium of the masses. It seems then that Eliade would refer to religion, and indeed even the field of comparative religious studies, as the grappling hook of men and society to propel ourselves upwards (if not necessarily forwards in an abstract sense).

Let us see what Marx himself had to say about religion, shall we? I believe it is worth quoting at length....

For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths,” i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Eliade was implicitly contributing to that 'criticism of religion' which Marx believed was the necessary prerequisite to any criticism, not least of social and political conditions. By focusing on shamanism, the 'technology of spirituality', Eliade was attempting to overcome the self-alienation of the individual from genuine religious feeling which ritualised institutional religion tends to create, and was instead emphasising the importance of individual spiritual experience.

Eliade seems through his research and conclusions here to lend such sentiments to Radical Traditionalist thought, which can only be described as the rebellious spirit which rises from time to time against materialist ideologies - not just Marxism, but liberalism as well, and to some extent, even Fascism, which many Romanian spiritualists who Eliade sympathized with and the Evolian strain of thought in Italy considered too populistic, popular, and commonly vulgar.

I see no contradiction between materialism and spirituality. D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese Zen mystic, once told Stockhausen that he saw no reason why a machine with artificial intelligence could not have a soul or have spiritual experiences. It is only in the West, with our tradition of Manichean dualism between (evil) matter and (good) spirit, that this idea seems nonsensical. Remember, the Chinese Daoist concept of qi is all-encompassing: mind and spirit is rareified qi, while matter is congealed qi - spirit and matter are both made of the same stuff. After all, how else could our mind move our body? They must be made of the same stuff. Cartesian mind-body dualism simply makes no sense at all.

[Smilin' Dave]

Do you believe the implementation of Strasserist principles would have led to a general "purge" of the Prussian elite or simply land redistribution

The stated platform of of the Strasserists was land and wealth redistribution. Much of their policies revolved around these basic requirements. Nazi leaders had always in private seemed to dislike the junker class. There isn't any reason to believe that the Strasserists wouldn't eventually clash with the junkers. It might not have been a purge is the strictest sense, but a conflict was inevitable.

[Far-Right Sage]

Potemkin, very interesting as I have not read the full quote from Marx before you brought it up here.

I see no contradiction between materialism and spirituality. D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese Zen mystic, once told Stockhausen that he saw no reason why a machine with artificial intelligence could not have a soul or have spiritual experiences. It is only in the West, with our tradition of Manichean dualism between (evil) matter and (good) spirit, that this idea seems nonsensical. Remember, the Chinese Daoist concept of qi is all-encompassing: mind and spirit is rareified qi, while matter is congealed qi - spirit and matter are both made of the same stuff. After all, how else could our mind move our body? They must be made of the same stuff. Cartesian mind-body dualism simply makes no sense at all.

This is actually a very astute observation on Suzuki's part. Its understanding is probably the single most important reason strains of neo-Gnostic thought have not landed any major attempt at a home in the East following their final great destruction in the West with the futile Cathar resistance of the Albigensian Crusade.

As it relates to the subject, I take it from your words that you feel Eliade (ironically as a Romanian nationalist of the Traditionalist school) began the sacred work of unraveling the origin and rational explanation of links behind common myths. Marxists would simply have capitalized on this (doubtless some have already) rather than taking it down the path of justification that followers of perennialist thought (and indeed, Eliade) would have and intended. While praising Eliade's work, you simultaneously seem to be thanking him in an underhanded fashion for contributing to the future dissolution of his own belief system. Potemkin, you were always quite cheeky.

The stated platform of of the Strasserists was land and wealth redistribution. Much of their policies revolved around these basic requirements. Nazi leaders had always in private seemed to dislike the junker class. There isn't any reason to believe that the Strasserists wouldn't eventually clash with the junkers. It might not have been a purge is the strictest sense, but a conflict was inevitable

Fair enough, as I suppose it's impossible to predict exactly what form a Strasserist government would take had Nacht der langen Messer not occured. We know of Otto and Gregor's strong rejecton of Führerprinzip and advocacy for strong elements of Prussian socialism as explored in Spengler's work Preußentum und Sozialismus. I remain uncertain that there would have been open conflict as opposed to willing collaboration.

[Decky]

Potemkin, very interesting as I have not read the full quote from Marx before you brought it up here.

It is probably the most misinterpreted thing Marx ever said so kudos for Potemkin for posting in context.

People tend to interpret opiate as a drug as in religion in the Heroin/ Cannabis/ Coke of the masses.

However he means opiate as in painkiller, something to make capitalism survivable.

The number of people, even supposed Marxists who don't grasp this is woeful.

[Potemkin]

This is actually a very astute observation on Suzuki's part. Its understanding is probably the single most important reason strains of neo-Gnostic thought have not landed any major attempt at a home in the East following their final great destruction in the West with the futile Cathar resistance of the Albigensian Crusade.

I absolutely agree. Of course, as with most traditions of Western philosophy, it can be traced back to Plato, who first clearly articulated the dichotomy between the (impermanent and ultimately worthless) material world and the (eternal and perfect) world of Ideal Forms. I believe I once called this "the original sin of Western philosophy". And I have always believed that the Roman Catholic Church did a good day's work when they crushed the Cathars.

As it relates to the subject, I take it from your words that you feel Eliade (ironically as a Romanian nationalist of the Traditionalist school) began the sacred work of unraveling the origin and rational explanation of links behind common myths. Marxists would simply have capitalized on this (doubtless some have already) rather than taking it down the path of justification that followers of perennialist thought (and indeed, Eliade) would have and intended.

The work of scholars often has consequences which they themselves did not intend or foresee. What a scholar subjectively thinks he is achieving is often completely different from what he actually achieves objectively.

While praising Eliade's work, you simultaneously seem to be thanking him in an underhanded fashion for contributing to the future dissolution of his own belief system. Potemkin, you were always quite cheeky.